Imagine, if you will, Christmas morning 1992. You tumble down the stairs like the clumsy kid you are and make a rather impressive dive towards the presents under the tree. Three quick tears later, and in your hands is a brand new SNES. You jump, you scream, and you get playing. And playing. Your parents have missed an entire week’s worth of news by the time you finally turn the thing off and move to other interests. The excitement has faded.

Chances are experiences like those are nothing new to you. Of course, nobody would be able to put down a SNES that quickly, but the point of the story is still stands. Things are more interesting and exciting when they’re new. That doesn’t just apply to physical things, oh no. Concepts most definitely aren’t left out! There’s this saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The same occurs when you’ve recently acquired a hammer, too.

That’s actually a trap in programming that learning developers may fall into. I know I have, am and will. You learn about this cool new technique for, I don’t know, increasing performance of your code. It’s super cool and works great, so you just work it into every project you touch. What you didn’t account for though, is that some situations are better off with a different optimization method, or that some may even suffer when combined with your newly-learnt technique.

So next time something new enters your life and you’re hype all over it, calm down and take it slowly, okay?
~ Fang

Comments

It’s very easy for something to be overexposed and it applies to a lot of things in life. You can burned out very quickly or, as you mentioned, do something that you shouldn’t because it’s the new in thing. Unfortunately it’s something we’re going to see more of in today’s fast paced society.